Who knows?

[Mokole]

Cap and Falcon was to be cancelled, apparently not. Runaways was to be cancelled, not. She-Hulk to be cancelled, not either. Only one rumour that AF may be cancelled, maybe not.

I wrote a letter to Marvel today to explain why I want AF around. Got me to thinking about why I don't like X-Men or Avengers anymore. Pretty simple (besides the X-angst that drives me batty if I hear X-news).

- X-Men used to be about mutant minority fighting for their rights, 'hated and feared', fighting guys who wanted mutant rule over the vast norm majority et al. Mutants were rarities, hence the term 'mutant'. Originally mutations came from atom bomb tests tests et al. In the last 5 years it's changed to mutants numbering in the millions (if not billions) and it being a fait accompli that norms will be subjugated someday. Boring, boring, dull, dull.

- Avengers were Earth's mightiest, now they quibble, fight amongst themselves, undercut their own authority and reason for existing. They make no sense anymore!

- AF was originally a team put together to defend the North and occasionally more. This AF does the same with less infighting and nashing of teeth. Amazing.

[Canucklehead]

AF was originally a team put together to defend the North and occasionally more. This AF does the same with less infighting and nashing of teeth. Amazing.

That's why WE love it so much, but do you think that might be what's alientating the book (besides the lack of marketting and the new humor format)? Without even reading an issue, peope know:
The X-Men always fought for a cause being in a minority.
The Avengers protected the world because they are Earth's mightiest heroes.
Alpha protects Canada.... *coff coff*

I always thought that if the book was to sell the numbers they wanted to those "outside the know", they'd have to give the team a niche other then protecting Canada. But then they wouldn't be our Alpha. It's kinda like selling hockey to the States. They keep changing the game but nothing they try seems to help, so why not just leave it the way it was?

They'll never sell 100,000 copies. Keep the formula that works so you don't have to cancel the book every couple years. I love the new series and I'll read anything Alpha, but not everybody is like that.

Ah well, I'm just cranky cause still waiting for the last two issues lol.

Dave

[Cliff]

At the risk of turning this into a "Why I love AF" thread or one about "Why I dislike X-Titles", I'll go ahead and agree fully with you.

Mutations like we're seeing in the X-men titles would be detrimental to life - the fetus would not be viable unless the mother too was a mutant able to carry such a severly genetically mutated child to term. Plus, the prolific nature of mutants it seems is exceeding it's boundary. There's so many of them and there's more every day, I'm beginning to thing the anti-mutant sentiment is spot on! I mean, look at them, they're everywhere!!! And they keep blowing stuff up too and putting others in jeopardy - they are a menace.

The current direction of the Avengers I don't mind so much, but it's something that should have been done with the X-men. Now that mutants are public and Xavier's school has been "outed" there's no going back. Conflict has been erased and without conflict you don't have interesting stories.

But the real thing that continually gets me is that in real life folks...I'm a mutant. We're all mutants because our DNA is totally different and modified from that of our parents. It shouldn't be a question of human versus mutant in terms of deffinition, but rather humans with more extreme mutations that other humans. I'm more mutated that many of my friends because I dont' have wisdom teeth, supposedly believed to be a path selected for by tens of thousands of years of the softening of our human diet. Does it make me better? More advanced? No - that's not what evolution is all about. evolutionary mutations are experiemnts and some work and stay in the population while others get lost and not passed on no matter how great an advantage it is.

Solution? No idea. They tried a plague and only managed to kill off lame mutants, Morlocks and the Rasputins. (lol)

As far as why AF has always been a favorite: Probably because it was nothing more than a bunch of characters that weren't like anything else out there. I like Puck less whenthe Raazer explanation came about because there simply were no other heroes that were little people. Shaman was an interesting and fun native american without ever being stereo-typical. The team led by Guardian felt more like a team inexorably tied to the planet on a spiritual level as well as a physical level. Mac had the geo-suit at his disposal and Shaman commanded the Earth Spirits while Snowbird was connected to it's wildlife and Sasquatch to it's physics as well as spirits (a melding of science and myth). There was something deeper to them, and the irony is that John Byrne never thought there was. I liked it better that Heather became the leader of a super hero team in spite of having no powers and that Eugene was in love with her but would never do anything about it out of the great respect for his dead friend.

What happened to that?

[kozzi24]

I think Byrne writing the characters off as throw-aways was from their conception in Uncanny 120-121. In their second appearance vs Wendigo, he added depth to Mac (via Heather) Shaman and Snowbird. I believe he was friends with Tom DeFalco, who introduced Northstar's amibivalence for being part of the team in Marvel 2-in-1. Then Byrne introduced NS's gay thing, Aurora multiple personalities, Sasquatch as bully who experiemtned on himself, Shaman's lost daughter, the addition of Puck and Marrina. He basically overcompensated for the one dimensionality of the visually great characters in Uncanny.
And he struck gold.
I think most subsequent writers have tried using the name Alpha Flight to tell the tales they wanted to tell, rather than wanting to tell ALPHA FLIGHT tales.

[PWalk]

I think most subsequent writers have tried using the name Alpha Flight to tell the tales they wanted to tell, rather than wanting to tell ALPHA FLIGHT tales.

Never a truer statement made. This team had so much in terms of background story that they alone could have fueled vol.1 for 500 issues. The writers that followed Byrne seemed to adjust AF on the fly to fit into stories they had already written elsewhere.

[varo]

I think most subsequent writers have tried using the name Alpha Flight to tell the tales they wanted to tell, rather than wanting to tell ALPHA FLIGHT tales.

amen!!

i think that statement sums up 2 almost 3 series worth of frustration.

[DelBubs]

I'd like to make a case for the writers who came after Mantlo and Hudnall. They in my opinion started AF on a road to recovery that would as someone said enabled it to continue to #500+. However vol 1 went tits up and vol 2 and the majority of 3 so far have, as Kozzi says, been writers

using the name Alpha Flight to tell the tales they wanted to tell, rather than wanting to tell ALPHA FLIGHT tales.

[Le Messor]

That's one of my problems with Lobdell's line - he seems to want to be writing X-Men, not AF. If he wants to live in the shadow of a series, why not AF1?
Not new X-Men, either, the stuff Len Wein and Chris Claremont already wrote.

I loved Hudnall's run - second only to Byrne in my opinion.
But I've recently decided that Nicieza's is lower than Mantlo' - not as bad lows, but -no- highs (and Mantlo hit some very high heights, imho).

- Le Messor
"I think we should split up."
"That's great. That's just great. Well, you'd better find yourself a hell of a lawyer."
"I meant, split up to find the dog."
"... Oh. That is a good idea."
- Dead Like Me

[Cliff]

basically Byrne wanted off so bad and Mantlo wanted a shot at a team book (or something to that effect) and so they just swapped titles starting Byrne's run on Hulk.

Believe me, it strikes me as odd that Byrne has no real investment or liking for AF beyond thier being another of his many creations, but from the sound of things, the EIC at Marvel at the time wasn't too easy to work with and they butted heads a lot. I can imaging that if everything had been running smoothly then Byrne would have been able to take AF in a direction more to his liking. He admits things just got more interesting after Mac died, but the Marvel "powers that be" wanted her in a suit or to gain powers, which he never did. Take a look at his FAQs on his personal website - very enlightening.

I think Wolverine has stolen the AF glory and as I read Vol.2 now the connection is too close between Department H and the Weapon X storyline. I think the only way to do things is to make AF divorce themselves from government employ and go privatized using public money to fund thier super-heroics. They step up and become heroes of the people, for the people by the people and you have a whole other level of conflict and resource.

[DelBubs]

Byrne had twelve issues worked out. That was all he envisaged for AF. He wanted to leave the story with Mac dead and AF in limbo. Unfortunately/Fortunately, Alpha Flight #1-12 did so well that Byrne was co-erced (who knows by what means) to write more.
That is probably why, apart from #13, AF #14-28 can never be measured against the first twelve issues. As soon as a chance of The Hulk came up, he was all over it like a rash.

Mantlo was asked too write Alpha. Problem is that when you follow a classic run, no matter what you do, it will never measure up. So with Mantlo we saw, ideas, new direction, a grip on the the old, but a pointer to the new, none of it worked, people who had been with AF since the beginning couldn't believe what the were seeing, but for some bizarre reason stuck with the book. It is recorded from numerous sources that at the end of his run, Mantlo was going to Marvel editorial asking for ideas as to what he should do with Alpha.

Oh and Cliff, no offence, like I'm gonna believe anything Byrne says, the man lives in a totally different dimension from the rest of us. apart from his acolytes at Byrne Robotics

[kozzi24]

I saw part of the problem with the Byrne/Mantlo Alpha/Hulk switch was that the books TOTALLY changed teams, including editorial. That left no editorial continuity and the business end of things as to why the book was working for (or in spite of) Byrne's stretch of issues without the entire team being present. I really liked some of Mantlo's issues. I still remember the chill I got when seeing the end of AF #49. The came #50, then went the team I loved, and things went downhill. If it had not been his last issue, the fourth wall breaking with "who will die" crap would have been my last issue.
The artwork was so back during Hundall's run, it really ruined the experience for me. Maybe a great powerful sorcerer doing things like spelling out "ALPHA FLIGHT" in dead fish didn't strike me as a good plot point.
Nicienza's short run was decent, I thought. He too concentrates on the original Alphas. His weakness was the resurrection of Mac, and that I don't sense he had much passion for the title.
Furman's run was the best post-Byrne, because he did concentrate on the AF charaters for the most part.

[Le Messor]

I thought Hudnall's writing - specifically #75 (The Woman Who Killed Spider-Man) - rose above the truly suck-worthy art.

Nicieza's didn't. The art was bad, though not as bad as Calimee's, but he did nothing for the team. Well, maybe their only versing of Dr Doom.
And I hated the way the issues were cut wrong - we got fifteen pages of this issue, then one page of next isuse, every time. All self-contained stories, no real ongoing thread or build-up, just a page from next issue.
That I -know- it was an attempt to sell more comics (Oh, now I've got to buy the next ish to find out what happens) makes it worse, not better.
Caveat: When New Warriors came out, I thought the art was mediochre - not bad, but nothing special. But I loved the writing so much I bought the series. So don't take this as a gripe at Nicieza in general, just his AF run.

- Le Messor
"Better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to speak and remove all doubt."

[Garry/Al-Fan]

I think Byrne writing the characters off as throw-aways was from their conception in Uncanny 120-121. In their second appearance vs Wendigo, he added depth to Mac (via Heather) Shaman and Snowbird. I believe he was friends with Tom DeFalco, who introduced Northstar's amibivalence for being part of the team in Marvel 2-in-1. ....Aurora multiple personalities, Sasquatch as bully who experiemented on himself, Shaman's lost daughter, the addition of Puck and Marrina. He basically overcompensated for the one dimensionality of the visually great characters in Uncanny. And he struck gold.

I think most subsequent writers have tried using the name Alpha Flight to tell the tales they wanted to tell, rather than wanting to tell ALPHA FLIGHT tales.

The last part is why I hate trying to stick to ALPHA FLIGHT "continuity," and writing a critique that got published is probably the reason I'll never be considered to write it. Too much has happened anyway for me to keep track of.

[Garry/Al-Fan]

Byrne had twelve issues worked out. That was all he envisaged for AF. He wanted to leave the story with Mac dead and AF in limbo. Unfortunately/Fortunately, Alpha Flight #1-12 did so well that Byrne was co-erced (who knows by what means) to write more.
That is probably why, apart from #13, AF #14-28 can never be measured against the first twelve issues. [Someone said during a crossover interview in Amazing Heroes, it may have been Mantlo, that you get a complete picture from #s 1 to 28. I agree. #s 23 and 24 tie the series together better than most anything I've ever read. Measure up? You bet. And the art isn't as sketchy and rushed, either. I liked the back-up stories better than the leads in #s 2 - 11, most of the time. Garry/Al-fan] As soon as a chance of The Hulk came up, he was all over it like a rash. [And then wasn't able to do what he had planned; b-e-t-r-a-y-e-d]

Mantlo was asked to write Alpha. Problem is that when you follow a classic run [so the whole Byrne run was classic.], no matter what you do, it will never measure up. So with Mantlo we saw, ideas, new direction, a grip on the the old, but a pointer to the new, none of it worked, people who had been with AF since the beginning couldn't believe what the were seeing, but for some bizarre reason stuck with the book. It is recorded from numerous sources that at the end of his run, Mantlo was going to Marvel editorial asking for ideas as to what he should do with Alpha. [I did not know this; it confirms my belief that AF should have been put on hiatus until someone who really had a vision for the series was able to do it.]

[kozzi24]

I did not know this; it confirms my belief that AF should have been put on hiatus until someone who really had a vision for the series was able to do it.

They just didn't do that back then. Marketing is different these days.